Zed on Chromebook

[codebird]

I use zed on my desktop PC Ubuntu 22.04. Now traveling, I have a chromebook for travel, I can't get zed to work, it installs and everything is fine, but once I try to run it, it is a very small window, keeps on flickering whenever you hover it with the mouse and it can't be used. Low density makes the window bigger, but still not usable.

[codebird]

seems like it is a wayland issue. When I used wayland on my desktop ubuntu, zed stopped totally opening too, unless I force x11. Can't force x11 on chromebook :(

[davepar]

Same here. Installed quickly on ChromeOS 126, but starting up zed displays a tiny window (1/6 size?), that's completely unusable. And it's continuously alternating between a new project wizard and "open a project" screen.

Side note: I'm excited to try Zed. VSCode is an enormous memory hog, which isn't great for a Chromebook. I've been using Sublime Text instead, but it doesn't seem as snappy as it used to be.

[codebird]

I went to chrome://flags enabled gpu for crostini JIC, to no avail :( I'll keep on tinkering...

[0skxr]

I actually have the same problem.
Funnily enough it works wwhen launching it from weston.

[davepar]

I found this, but haven't tried it yet: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/linux-on-chromeos-faq#why-are-windows-sometimes-tinyfuzzy

[codebird]

Now I am getting a pop up on launch, saying that the gpu is an emulated software gpu and it is unsupported :(

[0skxr]

I think it might be an issue with the compositor rather then the gpu, since it works in weston.

[renatocaliari]

Same here.

[renatocaliari]

Hi there, any news? 🙏

[davepar]

There is more info in this thread/comment on setting the display DPI and installing Intel GPU drivers: #13847 (comment)
However, I tried setting the DPI and I still get a tiny window.

[LaPingvino]

How I manage to use it on ChromeOS:

1. Turn on GPU support for Crostini
2. Install the Virtio GPU drivers and Vulkan
3. Run Zed with WAYLAND_DISPLAY set to empty (e.g. WAYLAND_DISPLAY= zeditor) to turn off Wayland

Hope I didn't forget anything there

I hope a way can be found to make it work better by default...

[mfouesneau]

This does not work for me.

[LaPingvino]

I got it to work with Arch on Crostini that way. Now I am back on Debian, and using Nix, and don't manage to get it running again... will keep you up to date about what I discover while trying to fix this! In short, it looks like a virtio/vulkan/wayland issue.

[mfouesneau]

Any new information?

[LaPingvino]

Can you post the output of lspci -nn and vulkaninfo here to help the Zed devs etc understand what's going on?

[LaPingvino]

lspci.txt
vulkaninfo.txt

Let me put mine here to give some context. I have managed to get virtio GPU to show up here before, but it looks like Zed struggles with some parts of this driver support. The default situation seems to be completely unsupported.

[mfouesneau]

lspci-nn.txt
vulkaninfo.txt

[LaPingvino]

yeah the virtio GPU shows up, so I think with that vulkaninfo the devs should be able to do something.

[mfouesneau]

Thanks. I hope that's an easy fix.

[matthyx]

hello, I'm interested as well

[mfouesneau]

Fresh container, checked vulkan info, and running vkcube.
If I do not remove WAYLAND_DISPLAY I get a window with unsupported GPU
If I do, I get nothing.

2025-09-09T19:47:46+02:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.202.7, sha cd9b0b5 ==========
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [zed] Using git binary path: None
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [crashes] spawning crash handler process
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [extension_host] extensions updated. loading 1, reloading 0, unloading 0
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::platform] activate is not implemented on Linux, ignoring the call
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [auto_update] auto-update check failed: error:Aborting. Could not find rsync which is required for auto-updates.
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 ERROR [client] DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [crashes] connected to crash handler process after 100ms
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [crashes] crash handler registered
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [gpui::platform::blade::blade_renderer] Initializing Blade pipelines for surface SurfaceInfo { format: Bgra8UnormSrgb, alpha: PreMultiplied }
2025-09-09T19:47:47+02:00 INFO  [zed::zed] Using GPU: GpuSpecs { is_software_emulated: true, device_name: "llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.6, 256 bits)", driver_name: "llvmpipe", driver_info: "Mesa 22.3.6 (LLVM 15.0.6)" }
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: Amazon Bedrock: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent_ui] No models available
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent_ui] No models available
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: Anthropic: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: DeepSeek: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: Google AI: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: Mistral: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: OpenAI: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: OpenRouter: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
2025-09-09T19:47:53+02:00 ERROR [agent2::agent] Failed to authenticate provider: Vercel: DBus error service error org.freedesktop.zbus.Error: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files

[mfouesneau]

sudo lshw -c video
  *-display:0               
       description: Display controller
       product: Red Hat, Inc.
       vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
       physical id: 1
       bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=virtio-pci latency=0
       resources: iomemory:20-1f irq:9 memory:d0800000-d0807fff memory:200000000-2ffffffff
  *-display:1
       description: Display controller
       product: Virtio 1.0 GPU
       vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=virtio-pci latency=0
       resources: iomemory:40-3f irq:10 memory:d0808000-d080ffff memory:400000000-5ffffffff
       ```

[mfouesneau]

Debian versions of Crostini are now too old to build the drivers.

[LaPingvino]

So I guess using the nixVulkanIntel command might be the only working option

[mfouesneau]

Do you have a procedure?

[matthyx]

Success! I am able to run Zed 0.205.8 on my Chromebook, here is how I did it:

Add backports to apt sources: sudo apt edit-sources, after adding the last line it looks like:

# Generated by distrobuilder
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

Then run sudo apt update and finally sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers/bookworm-backports.

I've restarted penguin after enabling the flag [#crostini-gpu-support](chrome://flags/#crostini-gpu-support) and now Zed works !

[mfouesneau]

@codebird thanks! This solves the GPU part.
However, my app opens in a tiny window that I cannot really use... If I move it between physical screens, it eventually becomes responsive and resizable. It's probably a WAYLAND issue, but if I unset the WAYLAND_DISPLAY variable, it crashes.
If I move the app to a different screen again, it reduces and becomes unusable. It's like it has a hard time understanding its own size.

[rsamborski]

@mfouesneau I was able to get Zed running in a normal window, but there is still an issue with using the mouse. See here for more details: #37878

[mfouesneau]

My mouse nominally works (I think). When I move the window, I can see a shade that is beyond (right, bottom). Maybe there is something with the density/resolution? (I cannot change the density to low with Zed apparently)